Occasionally in comments for newspaper articles, I’ll see some comment along the lines of:
We don’t need any more unmotivated zoned-out stoners, so let’s keep marijuana illegal.
Wow. What a concept. The “we-don’t-need-any-more” system of legislating. Forget analysis of whether the laws work, or whether they might affect other responsible people. No, this is much easier.
Let’s give it a try!
- We don’t need any more couch potatoes, so let’s outlaw TV.
- We don’t need any more red-neck fisherman leaving beer cans on the shore and pissing in our lakes, so let’s outlaw fishing.
- We don’t need any more overwhelming smells in elevators, so let’s outlaw perfumes and colognes.
- We don’t need any more reckless bicyclists weaving between our cars, so let’s outlaw bicycles.
- We don’t need any more litter, so let’s outlaw packaging.
- We don’t need any more loud sounds waking us up, so let’s outlaw street repair and emergency vehicles.
- We don’t need any more people with slow reaction times behind the wheel of cars, so let’s outlaw drivers over age 65. For that matter…
- We don’t need any more old people sucking up all the health care dollars, so let’s outlaw living past age 65.
What else can we outlaw?
We don’t need anymore fat people, so let’s outlaw sugery drinks…wait a minute! I think somebody got a hold of this idea before you did, Pete!
Yep, they are sort of using that plan to gradually outlaw floating the river here, dc. They began with ticketing parked cars, now you can’t even drive down the Strand Rd to pick up people and their tubes getting OUT of the river without getting a ticket, it’s at least half a mile to the one place that allows parking ($5, and your car is safe from prowlers. vandals and tickets) carrying all your gear (tubes, ice chest and miscellanea). I only take a water bottle and my tube and I work out everyday so the walk is not that hard on me, but it is still the principle of it all. I don’t think any of it is going to actually stop or even slow the floaters (there seem to be more of them every year and I’ve been doing it since 1974) unless they DO outlaw it and start arresting people for having a floating device other than a boat/canoe/etc. (registered and licensed, of course) on the river.
“We don’t need any more overwhelming smells in elevators, so let’s outlaw perfumes and colognes.”
NH Considers Fragrance Ban For Public State Workers
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/02/11/nh-considers-fragrance-ban-for-public-state-workers/
Government offices, hospitals ban perfume and after-shave
http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/326764/3/Government-offices-hospitals-ban-perfume-and-after-shave
Scents of Trouble : For the Sensitive, Fragrances Can Trigger Problems
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-09-18/news/vw-2240_1_sensitive-people
Well there are already a number of people on board with this ban.
We don’t need any more people on earth,,all they do is destroy everything they touch,,outlaw fucking.
Yes outlaw shagging! Just think of the children! For the ultimate in child safety we can just end reproduction.
Yeah, like with the sugary drinks, perfumes, and bicycles, the inventiveness of “sober reality” beats satire to the nasty punch.
We don’t need any more sin.
Let’s outlaw music, art, women.
.
.
Great, just what we need, even more hare brained laws as if we don’t have more than we need already!
If you want blood, you got it.
We don’t need no more people that don’t listen to their government, so let’s outlaw books and the internet.
We don’t need no education. Oh, wait…
When Prohibitionists speak, we witness GIGO, Garbage in, Garbage out!
Want to really torque ’em?
Ask them which legal drug would they remove from the availability list if they had to? Whatever answer they provide, even in attempting obfuscation, they illustrate their hypocrisy.
The threads on the wingnuts would get stripped within seconds, and said wingnuts fly off with dangerous force. Physical distance after asking the question is advised.
We don’t need any more whores, ban politicians (except for GJ, of course).
From Time Magazine:
We don’t need any more drug war waste. We don’t need any more drug war hypocrisy. We don’t need any more drug war lies. We don’t need any more drug war corruption. We don’t need any more drug war violence. We don’t need any more drug war.
I’ve noticed that increasingly, outside the whole anonymous angry internet world, lines along: “we don’t need any more zoned out stoners” give off the impression of some old asshole sitting in a corner at the bar; muttering about the world destroying drunk Irish, smelly Mexicans, or damned fags.
People get this sort of embarrassed/constipated look on their faces when someone starts down that path even if they themselves might argue for prohibition.
I know it’s not like this everywhere or for everyone; the image of the lazy/stupid/zoned-out cannabis user is too deeply chiseled on the walls of our archetype vaults. But it seems that for a growing number of intelligent, stable people, it’s coming across as a ridiculously bigoted statement at worst or a silly one at best.
I get the feeling that it’s no longer as acceptable in “polite” or serious face to face conversation as it once was. Is that just me and my friends/family/acquaintances? Anyone else notice a shift over the last 5 years or so?
Or maybe it’s simply no longer a statement that people feel comfortable saying in public, at least not anymore.
No, you’re not imagining things.
My B.A. was in Sociology, and taking social pulses is a habit/hobby of mine, particularly when it comes to this sort of thing. And it goes back to the generational shift I’m always harping on about. An actual shift in connotations of words, in language, itself, is taking place because of it.
As the first generations to have been actively, deliberately socially engineered, via anti-drug propaganda infiltrating almost every facet of their lives, I’m finding what you’ve observed taking place amongst late Boomers, and members of Gens X & Y.
What has been largely hidden, due to the cultural dominance of the ‘Greatest Generation’ and its’ predilection for reflexive violence to any challenge to its’ authority, has been slowly surfacing in daily interactions, due to that generation’s growing attrition making it impossible for it to assert the power it once had to silence the conversation.
The later generations, the ones that know the truth about illicit drugs, largely through personal experience, are coming into their own now, and they’re not having any more of this BS.
Like I keep saying, as the old chestnut went, “We’ll legalize when Grandma dies.” Well, it’s happening. And the attitude of “Pot’s no biggie” is showing up more and more in civil society, and this has the prohibs, mostly GG’s and early Boomers, gnashing their teeth and ripping their garments.
BECAUSE…their formerly captive audience, whose intelligence they could insult with impunity because of that formerly captive nature, is captive no more.
Free of the indoctrination centers once known as ‘schools’, they will now be able to voice their opinions freely rather than under the Pavlovian supervision of Nancy Reagan clones demanding, drone-like, for them to “Just-Say-No, Just-Say-No”. And some will be doing so in reform battleground States, like CO, OR and WA…at the ballot box
Drug prohibition has always received a ‘vote of no confidence’ socially from the latter generations. Now, drug prohibition will receive a REAL one, at the voting booth, by all those (hopefully, soon-to-be!) former victims of it.
Nicely put kap. I’m glad the smell of the still too distant ocean breeze isn’t just my wishful imagination.
Remember that in Great Britain a fag is a cigarette made with smoking tobacco.
Cars, let’s prohibit the sale of those new [safer] ones. We don’t need any more because we already have enough problems with the ones we’ve already got.
Do we really want our children growing up in a world where they’re less likely to be injured in a car accident?
We don’t need any more government terrorism. Ban ALL SWAT raids for nonviolent “offenses.”
We don’t need anymore uber rich people or not having enough money to vacation in Rome again this year -let’s outlaw money . . .no more people getting hurt in sports: outlaw sports . . . no more wasted tax money on fixing roads and bridges: outlaw roads and bridges . . . no more Dr’s making mistakes in their practice: no more doctors . . . no more meds with bad side effects: no more meds . . . no more smear campaings and wasted politican’s time campaigning: outlaw voting.
I think this years brick is coming up from the border,,,and it”s good,,,so far,not a seed in this batch.
YAY OH…Clay
Do pot users live longer than non-users?
According to my class reunion list,they do because most of the stoners from my days of young adulthood are still on the list and a lot of the str8’s are gone…
Not a damn thing scientific about it,,,,
I’d put this one at the top of the list:
– we don’t need smelly breath, so let’s make exhaling illegal.
Takes care of the rest of the list too. We just slap a sticker on the album Waiting to Exhale and call it our official sound track.
We don’t need any more lying, wars, or boots on the Constitution….so by all means let us outlaw politicians.